Want To Avoid Being Targeted By Facial Recognition Software? Wear These Glasses

By now, we’ve grown accustomed to Facebook automatically locating and urging us to tag people’s faces in photos, and, as 60 Minutes reported recently, “the ability of computers to identify faces has gotten 100 times better, a million times faster, and exponentially cheaper.” Advertisers are already beginning to incorporate the technology into their campaigns.

These trends have unsurprisingly caused a backlash from privacy-minded groups worried about the Minority Report-esque implications that such technology can unleash. But, as technologist Robert Scoble wrote on Twitter today, “[I] love entrepreneurs. When they see people get freaked out by the future, they develop products.”

What he was referring to was the pair of facial recognition blockers in the video above. “Light from these near-infrared LEDs can’t be seen by the human eye,” explains the inventor. “But when it passes through a camera’s imaging device, it appears bright.” Facial recognition works by looking parts of the eyes and nose that appear dark, so by placing light sources near the dark parts of the face, the device cancels face detection characteristics.